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Menno's Foundation-Book

The Foundation-Book (official title: A Foundation and Plain
Instruction of the Saving Doctrine of Our Lord Jesus Christ) is Menno's
most important work. In its importance for the Mennonites it is sometimes
compared to John Calvin's Institutes for the reformed church. Menno's
Foundation-Book was published in 1539 and deals with subjects such
as 'The Time of Grace', 'True Repentance', 'Concerning Faith', 'The Apostolic
Baptism', 'The Lord's Supper', 'Separation From the World', and 'The True
Ministers'. After the disaster at Münster, the Foundation-Book became
the most important guide book for the 'sheep without a shepherd', the
true, peaceful anabaptists in the Netherlands.

The Foundation-Book was intended as a defense against the many
misunderstandings about Anabaptist ideas. Menno says he wrote it "out
of a desire to be of service to all men, whoever they may be, for their
salvation". As the Dutch historian H.W. Meihuizen wrote in his introduction
to a new edition of the Foundation-book in 1967: 'It is a book
written with emotion; it presents to us a man of flesh and blood who intended
to bring more a vision than a treatise, more an ideal than a system; and
it could well be that the vision and ideal, in spite of the antiquated
form in which they are contained, are still able to speak to our time.'

The only known copies of the first edition of 1539 can be found at the
Library of the Verenigde Doopsgezinde Gemeente in Amsterdam (two copies),
the University Library of Amsterdam, the Koninklijke Bibliotheek (Royal
Library) in The Hague, the British Museum in London, and the Stadtbibliothek
(Municipal Library) in Hamburg.

Subsequent
editions were published around 1554, probably in Lübeck or Wüstenfelde,
and in 1558. This latter edition had a new title: Ein Fundament unde
klare awisinge van de heylsame unde Godtfellyghe leere Jesu Christi uth
Godes woort mit gueder corte vervatet under wederumme mit grooter vlyte
averghelesen unde ghebetert (A Foundation and Plain Instruction
of the Saving and God-Pleasing Teaching of Jesus Christ, Briefly Compiled
from the Word of God and Again with Great Diligence Read Over and Improved).

The 1558 edition had the following new books added to it:

- Concerning the True Christian Faith
- Concerning Regeneration or the New Creature
- A Consolation Regarding Suffering, the Cross, and the Persecution of
the Saints
- Meditation on the Twenty-Fifth Psalm
- Concerning the Spiritual Resurrection
- Concerning Excommunication, Ban, and Avoidance
- How Pious Parents Should Train Their Children

This enlarged edition was frequently reprinted, translated into German
(appearing first in 1575) and eventually incorporated into the complete
works of Menno Simons. All American editions of the Foundation-Book
are based on the edition of 1558.